After all this time, after all that's happened in the past year, even the cats 'n' kittens at Politico, even the ones who don't realize that Willard Romney is more comfortable in groups of white people, because to realize that is to get fired by the poltroons in charge there, have finally noticed that the campaign of voter-suppression being undertaken all over the country by Republican governors and Republican legislatures are going to have the effect of, you know, suppressing Democratic voting blocs.

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Supporters of these new laws — spearheaded in six swing states, as well as other less competitive ones - argue they are just trying to stop voter fraud and protect the integrity of the vote. But opponents, mainly Democrats and Obama's campaign, which is closely monitoring the daily warfare over the new laws, believe they are trying to change the face of the electorate in a way that benefits the Republican candidate for president.

On the one hand, there is a plate containing an aged sirloin, and, on the other hand, there's a bag of elephant dung. Equivalence!

(Before we continue, congratulations to the official American Idol sommelier of the University of Wisconsin Law School for bringing the discussion into her own private oblivion. This would be a salient argument if there actually were voter fraud, but there isn't, and even the people designing the laws are actually, you know, owning up to what they're really about.)

We can only expect Politico to go so far in admitting the obvious. After all, the entire publication is dedicated to the notion that all politics is a television game-show contested by celebrities who occasionally return their phone calls. That there are substantive effects to substantive policy decisions is best left to other sources, the ones to whom Drudge does not link, and the ones for whom Newt Gingrich would never deign to unlimber his mighty intellect in the McCarthyite defense of crazy women. There is no juicy linkage to be had in the stories of 86-year old women who suddenly discover they can't vote.

The good news is that both the Department of Justice, and the courts, are finally getting into the game — which, of course, gives the elite press permission to start talking about what's actually going on. The DOJ is looking into the law in Pennsylvania. It's also been in Governor Bat Boy's grill down in Florida for a few months now. The sudden bursts of candor we've seen in Pennsylvania and in Florida have both been forced by various legal proceedings, and everything's different when you put your hand on the Bible.